5 Minutes With… Pablo Del Monte
Label head of East Recordings Pablo Del Monte aka Paul Whelan is certainly a figure in the scene that runs a non stop life style. With numerous projects including events, labels and radio shows he has firmly cemented himself within the electronic music. The latest offering from the main man, House To House, has already gone down a treat this summer and really bodes well for the future releases yet to come. We recently caught up with Pablo, chatting further about the label, future releases and more.
How are you, what’s good, what’s bad right now?
I’m good thanks. I’ve been busy promoting my current release on East Recordings ‘House to House’ which has been going well in the Traxsource House chart for the last two weeks and with the Blandy & Soul Cat remix in the Jackin’ House chart. It’s on general release this week and popped into the Juno chart this morning so I’m pleased. On a down note, all these London clubs shutting is a real shame (Fabric due to close, Studio 388 burning down).
You run a label, a blog and a radio – how do you find the time? Is it hard?
Time management is my number one thing. I split the day 50:50 between running the label, blog, station and our club night Throw It Up and making music. I have to turn off the internet when making music or otherwise I can’t focus. I’ve got people helping me with each aspect of the project (apart from making the music…no ghost writers here!).
Tell us about each – what they offer, what music and artists you like to work with and so on…
I started off with Brick Lane Radio three years ago when I was studying at Point Blank Music school. I set it up with fellow students. It plays all styles of underground house and some D&B and garage. It kind of morphed into a blog over the years. Then I set up East Recordings last year. As it’s a label we had to narrow the sound down to the deep house-house-techhouse spectrum. We’ve had established artists like Inxec, Julius Papp and Rodrigo Ferrari involved, as well as new artists such as Caramen and DJ Bompe, both of whom have a distinct sound and who will be releasing EPs with us over the next two months. But in terms of rising stars Thallulah, William Medagli and Jose Maria Ramon have really grown in the last year with big support from Marco Carola. Their two EPs and two remixes for us are quality.
How did you come to your own sound, what inspired and influenced it, whats is your aim when making music?
To be honest I need to narrow my sound down a bit. Some of my releases like the current one, ‘House to House’, are party anthems whilst others, like ‘Distant Voices’, which is out now on Dear Deer’s new imprint House Grooves are super-deep and underground. Broadly-speaking, I look to get a certain emotional tone into my music that resonates be that through a chord progression like the pianos in ‘House to House’ or through sound design for the more tech-y stuff.
Can you write music on the road or do anything productive? How do you spend time in planes, trains and automobiles when travelling to gigs?
I bring my laptop with me, which has the same set-up in terms of plug-ins as my studio computer so I write in the downtime. I’ve also just recently switched to CDJs from vinyl so I find Recordbox a wonderful piece of software for planning sets.
And do you like to go wild over the weekend? Do you stay up the whole time, drink and party? What impact does that have on your DJ sets? Maybe you play better more weird, more free?
It’s just my personal view, but I’m of the opinion that if someone is paying you money to play records you should treat it like a job and not get messed up. In fact it’s a pet hate of mine, DJs who think they are playing a wicked set when they are under the influence….if they listened back to a recording afterwards I’m sure they’d cringe at some of their mixes.
Does weekend partying, being in altered states of mind, certain clubs or at certain festivals influence the music you make when you get back in the studio, or are the two not related?
Being in a club environment definitely influences what I make. I played recently with tech-house legend Nils Hess (of Eukatech fame) and he played records that in a million years I wouldn’t have thought would have worked but they did. In fact, the chords in my recent track ‘Marcha‘ were directly inspired by hearing Nils play ‘Labrador‘ by Terranova, which came out on Kompakt a little while back.
Do you do anything in the week, like yoga, reading, dog walking etc and so on to try keep some sort of a routine and get an escape from the industry?
I need to learn how to relax more. I essentially just work most of the time. I watch a bit of Netflix. I’m looking forward to their upcoming festival-based series XOXO, but I think it’ll be quite EDM-focused.
What else have you got coming up/are you excited about?
I’ve got a couple of releases coming out on Lupe Fuentes’s label In The Loop. ‘Return to Chicago’ EP is out next month and has been getting good feedback from the more house-minded DJs.
House To House is out now and available here.
